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Bringing In The New Year |
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I hope this past year was a good year for you. It was for me.
Lots and lots of things happened...the two biggest being the birth of my second boy, Gage, followed by building and moving into a new office space. Business was good. I feel as if I helped people in several different ways...whether it was getting someone out of pain, rehabilitating an old injury, guiding some on their quest to eat healthier, or helping some of you achieve athletic and training goals.
I would like to take the opportunity to personally wish you a fantastic start to your new year! I truly and genuinely appreciate every one of you who take the time to read my newsletter. I hope that there have been a few things along the way this past year that you found informative and useful, and were able to implement some of the ideas into your lifestyle.
In 2009, I want to add another outlet for finding information that you can use. While I will continue to send monthly newsletters, I will also be posting a blog on my website (http://www.therenkenscenter.com/). Each and every week I will be sharing lots of fun information on topics including nutrition, exercise, books and movies, and probably several of my random thoughts in between.
I am already hard at work coming up with some content ideas to appeal to several different people. I am very excited about the possibilities a new year brings and I hope you are too!
Again, thank you so much for being a part of what I am doing and continuing to create here at The Renkens Center! Here's to all of us enjoying health, happiness, and many successes in 2009!
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Core Strength With Specificity |
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I recently had the pleasure of again working with a patient who happens to be a professional baseball player. I write again because we first worked together prior to the start of the 2008 season, and I tell you he is a professional baseball player because it is something to consider in the content that follows.
What initially brought us together was his consistent trials with low back pain. After seeing him three times within a span of nine days, he was off to spring training camp. He went and did his thing and the next thing we know he is in "the show" hitting balls out of the park on a regular basis. It was a great story to say the least.
During his successful season, however, he suffered an abdominal oblique tear. Fast forward to two weeks ago. We spent the first 20 minutes getting caught up and going over his training and conditioning patterns during the past year. To my amazement, none of his conditioning was geared toward enhancing core and lumbar stability. Almost all of his work was rotation in the transverse plane with a lot of it being at high velocities.
This player was not the only one who suffered from this injury. USA Today ran an article earlier in the year showing this to be the "new" injury in major league baseball. Let me get straight to my point. While I think some rotation work can be beneficial, I think more attention needs to be given to improving hip rotation, thoracic spine range of motion, and rotary stability - or the ability to control rotation and resist it where you don't want it; i.e., the lumbar spine).
One trainer who works with Tim Hudson (also suffered an oblique injury a few years ago), was quoted in the article as saying, "After the 2005 season, he stopped doing rotational core work and hasn't had a problem. Could that be the solution?"
My other point in writing this is for all of us non-professional athletes out there. If major league baseball players - guys with lots of strength and power - are paying the price for overtraining rotation, what does that mean to those of us training on our own or with personal trainers?
All too often these days if you look around the gym you see people doing all sorts of crazy things. From chopping movements with flexion and rotation to hyperexteding the lumbar spine while deadlifting to doing hundreds of crunches with their neck and lower spine flexed...I see all of it regularly. Recently, I even saw an individual attempting to stand on a Bosu Ball (contoured side down) while curling a dumbell in one hand and pressing another dumbell overhead with the other. Whew! All of that with their trainer standing at their side. Double whew! Why is it that trainers are trying to make things look sexier or more hardcore when in reality they are just putting people at higher risks for injury?
I believe both the personal training industry as well as some training settings involving professional athletes have gone in the wrong direction. With the recent emphasis on unstable training and rotational training, I think more and more are people are training into injury. My philosophy: stick to major movements involving multiple joints over a stable surface to generate strength, power, and stability. Add some balance training as active recovery between sets if improving balance is an objective in your programming. |
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The Importance of Thoracic Spine Mobility |
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This month I decided to revisit the thoracic spine and its role in how our body functions (or does not function) efficiently. When it gets right down to it, the thoracic spine (T-spine) needs to work right. That is, it needs to have mobility in three planes - extension, rotation, and lateral or side bending. Unfortunately, due to poor postural habits and lack of attention, most people are walking around everyday with a rigid, immobile, dysfunctional T-spine.
Yes, ever so subtly over time thoracic spine mobility decreases and one's overall function is impaired. The subsequent compensatory effects may show up in the neck, the shoulder, the low back, the hip, or even the knee - or any combination of the above. Let me explain.
Due to the resiliency of your body, instead of slowing down, your body begins to over utilize other joints and muscles to allow you to do what you want to do. The closest joints in the chain - the lumbar spine (low back) and lower cervical spine (neck) suddenly have to pick up the slack and work a little harder.
Now at this point, your low back and neck are overstrained and if this pattern is not broken, it is only a matter of time before those areas and other muscles and joints (shoulder, elbow, hip, knee) begin hurting.
For the fun of it, lets pick the knee and explore how the thoracic spine could be the cause of knee pain. So we know the lumbar spine is being over-recruited for motion, hence losing stability. In response, the hip(s) try to isolate the problem by becoming stiffer and immobile. Now the immobile hip increases the demand on the lumbar spine even more as well as the knee joint below. A vicious cycle of compensation and motion loss begins all as a result of the thoracic spine being locked up.
There are several strategies for improving extension and rotation / sidebending throughout the T-spine. These include foam roller mobilizations and other low intensity exercises. I encourage you to revisit past newsletters for descriptions of some of these exercises.
If you want more ideas please feel free to email me, or better yet, schedule and appointment so we can go over those that are applicable to you in person.
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